


heart of glass, slippers of bone

by betony



Category: Cinderella (Fairy Tale), Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Schneewittchen | Snow White (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27157043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: Her son is born with coal-black eyes and cool white skin. This changes everything.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 59
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	heart of glass, slippers of bone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kitsunerei88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunerei88/gifts).



Only when they place her newborn son in her arms does the Princess—the Queen, now—realize she will, in fact, not return to the little cottage in the woods. She may have given her word; but her word is a little thing, and fragile, far too easy to break. Her seven guardians—godfathers, as they call themselves—will simply have to teach themselves to bear disappointment.   
  
Because, no matter how she’d tried to avoid crows caught in thorn fields, snow untouched by hunters’ tread, nonetheless her son had been born with coal-black eyes and cool white skin. All too well she knew what happened to children like these—she dared not leave his life in the hands of a stepmother. Already her husband’s eyes wander, and she cannot trust his taste: whoever he marries after her may not watch in mirrors, but will want her own child to rule after her. Whoever he marries may lack a taste for hearts, but not balk at blood.

She turns away from the open window; she latches the heavy doors of her bedroom. She will not give into temptation. She owes her boy that much.

* * *

(“ _A life for a life,” warns the eldest of her seven solemn godfathers. “Give him an heir for the life he restored to you, the apple-core he knocked from your throat, however unthinkingly, and return to me, knowing your debt repaid.”_

 _She nods even before she knows what she is doing. Her chest fills with air, welcome and odd and overwhelming all at once. She rises, still shaking, and steps into the sunlight, towards to the waiting King’s horse_.)

* * *

The young prince’s favorite room in all the palace is that in which his father stores his trophies, and so it is that where his mother finds herself most often. If at one end, her mouth twists into a frown; at the other, her shoulders relax once more.

Walk with her, see what she does. In one corner, the glass coffin, lined with silk, where her head once laid. It was made by unearthly hands, the better to increase the beauty of that which lies within. To this day, she’s not sure why it should be so: but then again, what did her godfathers love better than a challenge?

(“ _Anything?” she repeats, skeptical._

_“Anything,” her godfather confirms. “Imagine. A coach grown from a gourd. A dog twisted onto its back legs. A gown enchanted to make the wearer unrecognizable to any eye, even those of their own blood. All these and more might come from our hands.”_

_What then, she wonders but does not ask, might be taken by those same hands in return?_ )

In the opposite corner, marvel at the shoes that still rest there: the shoes that, decades ago, danced a woman to death. They had been red-hot then, when sizzle and screams had blurred together, when the smile of the King’s face had echoed her godfathers’ satisfaction.

There was one thing, and one thing only the Queen could say for them: they had been beaten, patiently, out of pure iron. She lets her fingers brush against them, across her son’s forehead, and revels in her momentary safety. 

( _She doesn’t ask because she already knows:why, only that what you love the most_.)

* * *

(There are things a Princess, cast out into the woods, knows to fear: branches, wolves, midnight gloom. Hunger, humiliation, haggard stepmothers waiting even now in their solitary towers.  
There are things she doesn’t, and those the most dreadful of all. They are metal-workers, covered in diamond-dust, with great glowing eyes that shine with greed.

There are things a Prince, dark-haired and darling, pampered in the palace, cannot so much as imagine, and those will ever be his doom.

How foolish to have forgotten that!)

* * *

And in the end it is not enough: the Queen, on her deathbed, looks about with fever-glazed eyes, and her son shuffles closer. Here her fears ought to seem so far and so faint; here, instead, they blaze across her mind, bubble up to her lips.

“‘Ware the glass,” she rasps, for she means him to know, before it is too late, what he comes from and what he must avoid. “Mind the—the shoes—“

The prince, half-dozing, half-dreaming of the ball held the night before and of one reveler in particular, raises his head and brightens. “Glass shoes?” he repeats, only these words having penetrated his boredom. “Ah, Mother, that’s how I’ll bring my hind to hand. Capital notion.”

He rises from his chair, mother already forgotten, head full only of thoughts of encountering the enchanting young miss who’d fled at midnight, babbling some nonsense about godfathers and their decrees...no, a godmother, certainly. He will have her, and wed her, and if the words ring in his head with a sense of terrible sweetness, he pays it no heed.

And if the coffin cracks and the shoes shudder into dust, there is no one left to notice.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! Thank you for your lovely prompts, and I very much hope you enjoy this!


End file.
